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"I missed out on everything," I admit, my voice cracking. "Friends, parties, college… not that I wanted those things, but I wanted the choice, at least. And for what? For a woman who couldn't even treat me the way a mother should. She was so focused on herself, on her sickness, that she never saw what it was doing to me. But I still wanted her to see me and appreciate me. It's just… complicated. It's not healthy. It never was."

There's silence for a moment, just the soft light of our glow filling the cave as I process my own words. I don't know why I'm telling zha all this. Maybe it's because I've been bottling it up for so long. Or maybe I just needed to say it out loud to someone—anyone—who wouldn't judge me.

“I did not understand a lot of that,” Kroaicho admits and my heart sinks, “but I gathered enough to know that you were treated poorly. But that is not how I see you. Anything in a hoard is not a ‘thing.’ It is… a treasure to be protected. A treasure worth time and attention. A treasure that cannot be replaced. What I realized, just now, is that no treasure fits that description better than you. There is never more than one person that is exactly the same, and you are the most valuable among them.”

My skin lights with orange to hear zha’s words, but then I realize there is another unsettled matter tied to my story. “My two zhann,” Kroaicho twitches at that, still getting used to the idea. “Did not raise me together and it was terrible for me. I mean, it happens to a lot of people and they are fine, but I don’t want to do that. If we are two, then if you have a zhannel, then we become three… or four. I’m not ready for that,” I add hastily, “even if it was possible, but you need to know that there is definitely a ‘we’ when it comes to that.”

Kroaicho nods, the movement awkward for zha and it makes me smile. “I will agree to us being three… or four, instead of one. When the time comes to share our hoard.”

33

Kroaicho

Iknowthereisno miscommunication or misunderstanding now. Olivia’s skin is purple with zha’s rage, but also with the light that zha got from me. And we are both thrumming green, and not just because of this confusing arousal that zha spoke of or something done to zha by the genali.

No, this is our own glow, and this time I plan to enjoy it and not allow the doubts that hit me before—that zha would take my hoard—distract me.

With that thought, I can no longer wait to touch zha and surge forward, eliciting a shocked squawk from Olivia before my limbs tighten enough to pull out that sigh of contentment as I squeeze.

I take in a deep breath, impatient to hear the sounds zha makes when I let out my expellent, but zha interrupts me. “Wait!”

I close the flaps of my expellent with great difficulty, skin thrumming with my annoyance. “What now? I would like to feel you writhing again.”

Zha makes a choking sound, then speaks again. “I want that too, but I don’t want this to be one sided.”

My tusks start grinding together that we are back to this argument. “You don’t have expellent, Olivia.”

“I know that, but don’t think I forgot that you almost told me somewhere I could touch,” zha snaps back, zha’s skin lighting up purple to match my own.

“You do not like to touch,” I retort.

“I wouldn’t be offering if I didn’t want to do it. It’s easier when it’s me touching someone else. I want this, Kroaicho. Tell. Me.” The last two words are clipped and forceful and I relent.

“Inside my nostrils,” I explain.

“Say what?” zha responds, skin lighting up blue.

“The flaps that hold back my expellent. Some zhannel find something soft to hold and stroke in there,” I say with a huff.

“Oh, ‘some zhannel’? Never you?” zha responds, mocking in zha’s voice.

“As I said, it is not necessary that—”

“Stop talking and shift me around so I can do this, uh… thing,” zha says with conviction.

I move zha farther up onto my upper segment as I push my head back and lower my snout, ensuring that zha’s limbs can reach.

“There are four. All of them or just one?” zha asks.

“One is sufficient, I am sure,” I chitter back.

“Four it is, then. Luckily I have four hands now,” zha says while reaching up toward me.

My spikes tingle and my middle segment twitches in anticipation.

“You are going to have to squeeze me harder than that or this might be more violent than pleasurable,” zha tells me and I quickly comply.

The idea of zha’s wrist claws near such a delicate area while zha is angry is horrifying. My body is rigid as each of zha’s hands make gentle contact with the fluttering edges of my nostrils. The first touch sends waves of feeling through all of my segments and I relax.